Archive for November, 2011
The Evolving Nature of Corporate EHS: Tune in Nov. 30 at 6 p.m.
On Nov. 30, NAEM Executive Director Carol Singer Neuvelt will join expert panelists at the Yale School of Forestry and the Environment for a discussion about the evolving role of environmental, health and safety (EHS) management. Sponsored by General Electric through the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders for Business and Society, this event will elucidate the skills environmental managers should develop to drive value in the age of sustainability.
Featured Panelists:
- Gretchen Hancock, Program Manager, Corporate Environmental Programs, General Electric Co.
- Paulette Frank, Vice President, Sustainability and Environmental Health and Safety, Johnson & Johnson
- Carol Singer Neuvelt, Executive Director, National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM)
- Ellen Quinn, Vice President, Environment, Health, and Safety, United Technology Corp., Fire & Security
The event will be live streamed from 6-7:15 p.m. (EST).
To tune in, please visit:http://www.livestream.com/yale
Signs of a Strong EHS Culture
Stephen Evanoff
At this year’s NAEM Forum in Tucson, several speakers and participants made the point that a strong environment, health and safety (EHS) culture is a prerequisite to achieving and sustaining a high-level of EHS performance, and EHS managers are better served by focusing on building an EHS culture than focusing strictly on outcomes. Building a culture that values EHS is difficult and takes years, so it’s important to have a clear vision of what a strong EHS culture looks like. Here are my thoughts on the core characteristics of a strong EHS culture.
- Top management is involved and visibly supportive: Senior managers include EHS in enterprise goals, metrics, and operations reviews. They engage in safety-related activities, such as safety walks and self-audits, and set a clear and consistent tone through their actions that EHS is a core value.
- All levels of management are accountable: EHS comprises a significant portion of performance evaluations for managers and supervisors. Managers and supervisors are expected to create a safe work environment for their associates, and ensure the people under their supervision tend to their EHS responsibilities with the same rigor as they do quality, productivity and schedule.
- EHS is integrated into core business processes: The EHS program is made operational through the enterprise business management system and standard operating procedures. In enterprises where EHS is well-integrated, EHS doesn’t require special attention or management exhortations. It is simply how business is done.
- EHS is communicated effectively and frequently: EHS requirements are understood by all associates. New associates receive EHS training appropriate to their jobs as part of orientation. Management realizes that the importance of EHS must constantly be reinforced to achieve and maintain a high-level of performance.
- Doing the right thing is innate: Associates have a high-level of EHS awareness, receive sufficient and continuous EHS training and are given the tools to ensure effective EHS management. Associates do the right thing and do things right, even when nobody is watching.
- Associates are motivated: People find intrinsic value in high EHS performance. They understand its contribution to the success of the enterprise and take pride in doing their part.
What characteristics do you think are essential for a strong EHS culture?
The Cost of Incivility
Alex Pollock
The world of college football recently reminded us of the impact an individual’s behavior can have on the health and culture of an entire organization.
In their book, “The Cost of Bad Behavior,” authors Christine Pearson and Christine Porath highlight how destructive a particular type of bad behavior, “incivility,” is to American business. As many as 48 percent of employees experience incivility at work at least once per week, the authors say, arguing that the problem is more than just a minor inconvenience: it’s a “largely preventable ill that begs to be addressed.” Employees who experience incivility intentionally lowered their productivity, cut back work hours, lost respect for their bosses, put in minimal acceptable effort and sometimes even left their jobs- all because of disrespectful words and deeds, according to the authors. Workplace incivility comes in many forms and includes:
- Shutting someone out of a network or team
- Setting others up to look bad
- Spreading rumors about colleagues
- Leaving snippy voice mail messages
- Talking down to others
- Taking credit for the work of others
- Making demeaning or derogatory remarks
- Being aloof
- Belittling the work of others
- Using emails to send personal information instead of spending face-to-face time
- Failing to return messages
Civility takes time and effort. It’s not just about being “nice” but it’s about mutual respect. Some of the desired behaviors include:
- Assume positive regard
- Listen eagerly without interrupting
- Seek out and integrate diverse perspectives when making a decision
- Never act in a way that could be perceived as threatening or intolerant
- Maintain objectivity when conflict arises
- Be approachable to all people
- “Serve” rather than waiting to be “served”
How is all of this making you feel? Not sure? What can you add from your experiences? Do you need to add more civility to your mix? Begin by asking those around you a few questions like:
- Do I behave respectfully to all around me?
- Do I treat those on whom I closely rely better than I treat others?
- Do I keep control of my emotions regardless of the pressures I’m facing?
- Do I take out my frustrations on those who have less “power” than me?
I’m humbled by the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do not believe that you can possibly escape the reward of your action.” Let’s make sure we’re excited about getting our reward.
Past Presidents Series: Maybe a Village is Not the Answer
Dick Pastor
I read with interest the blog from Mark Posson on August 8, 2011 entitled “Community Engagement is the Key to Climate Action.” My immediate thought was that perhaps he was right. After all, didn’t we all agree that it takes a village to raise a child? The more I thought about it, though, I was drawn to the fact that perhaps by community he must have meant individuals and not organizations.
Isn’t it really the choices that individuals make that will impact any changes that we wish to bring about?
It is individual behavior changes that will result in progress really being made. Not government, not corporations, and not organizations, but in reality the individuals who make up all these entities. While you can try and make an individual’s choice easy, financially attractive and provide some type of immediate gratification, when you get below the surface the reasons an individual makes a choice is because they really believe it is the right thing to do. The personal satisfaction of “doing the right thing” is the gratification people get. This premise is what we have always been told. When you face a question the best course of action is to do the right thing.
Now, I am not saying that the decision of what is the right thing to do will always be easy. In fact some of our greatest internal issues have dealt with what is right. Just Google the term, “doing what is right”, and you will find more than 10,200,000 entries, ranging from moralists and philosophers all expounding about how they approach the question. It is interesting to note that there is even an online course at Harvard, taught by Michael Sandel, where one of his critical sessions is entitled “What’s the right thing to do?”
To get the major changes we desire then we must look to the individual to make the right choices and these choices should be based on what they perceive as their person responsibility. What is your personal responsibility?
Sustaining a Safe Workplace through Design
Walt Rostykus
As safety practitioners, we know that engineering controls (elimination, isolation or substitution) are the first and preferred levels in the Hierarchy of Controls. By eliminating or reducing the exposure to a hazard through the design of a job or workstation, we establish a level of safety for all people working there. Engineering controls, also called Prevention through Design (PtD), also reduce the need for administrative (behavioral) controls and use of personal protective equipment. PtD is not a new concept, but is a recent initiative that is taking hold again.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is leading a national initiative to promote this concept and highlight its importance in all business decisions. The concept continues to focus on planning and design of new workstations and process through two steps:
- Identifying hazards and
- Designing out the hazards through engineering controls.
It sounds easy. But if it is, why do environment, health and safety (EHS) programs struggle to control hazards after the fact? Why do safety professionals and management still rely heavily on behavioral and administrative controls instead of engineering controls? In my experience and through Humantech benchmarking studies, we’ve identified the three key elements for successful PtD processes as “At the right time, by the people (in the right role), and with the right criteria.”
- Right time: Prevention starts at the design phase when layout and tool design are concepts. This is where chemical, musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), and pinch-point hazards (to name a few) are easily identified by reviewing drawings and mock-ups. Changes made during the design phase to add capture ventilation, reduce reach distances, and add guarding cost 1/10 to 1/100 of what they would cost if made retroactively.
- Right people (role): The person(s) who designs the workplace or tool or specifies equipment is the best person to find and fix unacceptable exposures. Typically, these people are in an engineering role (process, production, mechanical, facilities or new product design engineers). Benchmarking studies continue to show that a common characteristic of companies with effective ergonomic improvement processes is that engineers, not solely the safety staff, are responsible and accountable for low-hazard design of the workplace.
- Right criteria: For engineers to be successful in designing jobs and workstations with low risk/hazard, they need the right tools. I am not referring to a shelf of engineering textbooks, but a limited and focused set of design guidelines, specific to that product or industry, that quickly provides the acceptable limits for design. Examples of ergonomic design guidelines include standing workstation height; reach distance; force limits for reaching, pulling or pressing; and viewing distance and placement. From this, engineers can quickly design the physical parameters of the workplace to fit the capability of the working population.
The concept of PtD sounds simple. And, in fact, it is simple. As simple as patching a leaky boat so you can paddle, not bail. Is PtD working in your organization? Is it practiced at all levels of the organization, or does EHS have to be the cheerleader and driver of the process? If success relies on EHS, what are the barriers you’ve encountered and how have you overcome them?
Past Presidents Series: Has Science Lost its Power of Persuasion?
Craig Liska
I am not a curmudgeon, but since Andy Rooney is no longer with us to continue his long-time “60 Minutes” tradition, I thought I would take a crack at being one…
During the 32 years I’ve worked in the EHS/Sustainability field, I’ve noticed that many EHS professionals inherently want to do “the right thing,” and are much more comfortable than most people using science as a means to help decide what is right. Traditionally, one of our profession’s biggest challenges has been convincing senior management that what is scientifically the “the right thing” to do can also be good for the business. And using a scientific rationale has typically been more appealing to the public as well. Customers and end users are more likely to rally around an idea based on good science rather than one motivated by political ideals, and I think trust has much to do with this.
Have you noticed, though, that recently there seems to be a growing tendency to defer to the short and simple solution regardless of what may be scientifically correct?
One example of this that you might have encountered is the use of recycled paper. Everyone agrees that using recycled paper is good for the environment because it keeps paper out of the landfill and reduces carbon emissions. So, the simple solution has been to use as much recycled paper as possible in every type of paper. But what if good science (Life Cycle Assessment) tells you that it is not that simple and finds that it actually depends on which type of paper you are reusing it in?
Using recycled paper in magazines can require significant processing to remove the inks before it is bright enough for use, while using recycled paper in cardboard boxes would require less de-inking with their lower brightness requirements. This extra processing usually involves fossil fuel-based electricity along with higher CO2 emissions. Most of the energy used to make virgin magazine paper, on the other hand, comes from renewable energy. Although it requires more energy to make than recycled paper, virgin paper may wind up having lower carbon emissions (thanks to the use of renewables).
So, which is better to use: recycled paper or virgin paper? The answer is, “It depends.” Unfortunately, many people don’t like that answer or want to spend the time to understand the issue more clearly. I find one of the biggest challenges in our profession is being able to communicate that complex, scientific “right thing to do” in simple terms that are persuasive. I am sure you all have similar stories on digging too deep into the weeds.
What have been your successes in communicating complex solutions in simple terms?
Craig Liska is Vice President of Sustainability for Verso Paper Corp., where he is responsible for integrating Verso’s sustainability philosophy of balancing environmental, social and economic values into decisions affecting all aspects of the business. This involves decisions from wood/fiber procurement and manufacturing to product development and final disposition of products. Prior to joining Verso, Mr. Liska worked for Motorola, where he was Corporate Director for International EHS and had a history of increased EHS responsibilities both at the manufacturing plant and corporate management level. He also has experience at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, holding various positions of increasing responsibility. He was the President of NAEM in 2005.
Can engaged employees transform the U.S. economy?
Alex Pollock
Now that the world population has surpassed the seven billion marker, the “sustainability” word is getting lots of play once again. The call-to-action bugles are again warning us of a pending global catastrophe. What could suddenly create “worldwide peace, global well-being and extraordinary advancement in human development?”
In a new book, “The Coming Jobs War,” author Jim Clifton says a solution is the appearance of a whopping 1.8 billion “good” jobs. These are jobs that provide at least 30 hours of work per week and a steady pay check. Clifton believes that the country that can best achieve job growth coupled with GDP growth will be the dominant world force.
Can the United States be this global force?
Clifton believes the explosion of entrepreneurship that GDP growth requires won’t happen here until the country doubles its number of “engaged” employees: those who are using their talents every day, yielding great results, emotionally committed and are working consistently with high energy and enthusiasm.
This number currently stands at 28 percent nationally. Going from 30 million to 60 million engaged workers will “change the face of America more than any leadership institution, trillions of stimulus dollars, or any law or policy imaginable,” Clifton argues.
But as long as “one in five U.S. managers are “dangerously lousy,” these “high-energy workplaces” will elude us, Clifton says. “Fire all lousy managers today” is an imperative, he argues, because nothing fixes bad managers: not coaching, competency training, incentives or warnings. In his experience “bad managers never get better.”
What’s your reaction to his analysis? Clearly there is an opportunity for each of us is to contribute to the creation of these attractive “high energy workplaces” where we willingly give our best every day. We just can’t just afford to be a passive observer on this one.
